With one of Hillsong United's latest hits, &quot;So Will I (100 Billion X),&quot; at the center of a creation versus evolution debate, worship leader Joel Houston is setting the record straight on where he stands.

Christians see the number of translations as a good thing—more people are able to read God’s word in their own language. Others, however, seem to think the number of translations is a bad thing. In fact, they cite the number of translations in order to call into question the Bible’s reliability.

So, as “two core American values – freedom of religion and freedom from discrimination,” begin to collide in legislatures and courtrooms across America, let’s learn to defend our Christian beliefs with more than anecdotal, personal stories. I encourage every Christian to study, master and articulate the historical, scientific and philosophical evidence for the Christian worldview. Believe it or not, it’s possible to be a Christian because of the evidence, rather than in spite of the evidence . Let’s help others recognize this important truth, and the fact that our desire to protect religious liberty is rooted in more than a matter of subjective opinion, it’s grounded in a reasonable desire to live in accordance with the truth.

Proponents of secular ideas — teachers, textbooks and friends — surrounded me in high school. I began to wonder, How can we know Christianity is true? Tragically, none of the adults in my life offered answers. Eventually I decided Christianity must not have any answers, and I became an agnostic.

For more resources visit: http://www.reasonablefaith.org In February 2015, Dr William Lane Craig visited Rutgers University in New Jersey at the invitation of the campus Christian group Ratio Christi. He gave an evening lecture on the subject “The Existence of God and the Beginning of the Universe” to a packed auditorium of several hundred students. Although some pushback was anticipated, the audience, which was composed of both believers and nonbelievers, proved to be very open, and a wonderful time of interaction for an hour and a half afterwards took place. We welcome your comments in the Reasonable Faith forums: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/forums/ Be sure to also visit Reasonable Faith's other channel which contains short clips: http://www.youtube.com/drcraigvideos Follow Reasonable Faith On Twitter: http://twitter.com/rfupdates Like the Reasonable Faith Facebook Fan Page: https://www.facebook.com/reasonablefa...

Dr. Andrews’ credentials as a scientist and theologian are many—he is one of those individuals who has more letters after his name than there are in the alphabet (ok, yes, that’s a bit of hyperbole there), but he is also a truly humble man. At 85 years old he remains as sharp and well-spoken today as he was back when I first knew him— back when he was, well… 80. He’s even publicly debated Richard Dawkins!

The answers would certainly vary, but how often do we hear a parent say, "I want my child to have learned piety in our family?" Would even Christian parents give such an answer? One definition of piety is "devotion to religious duties." The faithful observance of duty in a culture as feeling-oriented as ours sounds less than interesting. Yet devotion to duty ensures that what is right and important gets done, however, we feel about it at the moment. Devotion to duty is a part of good character, and devotion to religious duty-piety-is an essential part of godly character.

Not to rush too quickly to judgment, though, there are reasons people react that way. They think it’s a dry subject for intellectuals, if they think of it at all. Maybe they’ve heard it taught that way; some of it can be pretty academic, after all. Or they think it’s an affront to faith: “Why should I have to prove why I believe? God’s word is all I need!” Or they’ve associated it with unseemly arguments, and they’ve come to the conclusion that it doesn’t do any good anyway.

One of them is First Baptist Church of Dallas, the center of the current furor there over America's Christian roots. Dr. Robert Jeffress, the congregation's senior pastor, promoted an upcoming sermon on America's roots with a billboard declaring, "America is a Christian Nation." The billboard's message upset Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings, who feared it might be divisive. "It's not the Dallas I want to be," said the mayor, who nevertheless personally identifies as a Christian.

What he says is “Fully to enjoy is to glorify.” He probably meant “Fully to enjoy is to glorify fully .” I doubt that C.S. Lewis meant — and I’m sure he didn’t, given other things he says — I doubt that he meant the only glory God gets from our enjoyment of God is the glory he gets when our joy is total, complete, full, or perfect. No, Lewis doesn’t think that. Now, whatever Lewis meant, that’s not what I mean in the summary of Christian Hedonism.

The existence of ugliness, pain, sorrow, and in particular human evil, are often used as evidence that there is no designer, or more specifically no God, because if he were good he would not permit suffering. The world would need to be a perfect place in order to support the idea of a good designer.

Matthew has 28 chapters – noting that these chapters are not part of the original text but give us a rough idea of a Gospel’s length compared to the other Gospels. I counted 65 references to the OT. Matthew’s Gospel, the most Jewish of the Gospels, has the major theme of Jesus being the Jewish Messiah; thus, it’s not surprising that the author, Matthew, includes many references to the OT, especially in the first three chapters, to support this idea.

Presumably they will just conclude that birds can get around due to their ability to fly great distances, and thus they can avoid another embarrassing appeal to monkeys and other animals “rafting” across the open Atlantic Ocean to solve this problem. But it’s still a further failed biogeographical prediction for neo-Darwinism.

One of those key ideas was the idea of intelligibility: that nature is intelligible. There’s an order and design that can be understood and discerned by the scientist because nature is the product of a rational mind, namely the mind of God, and that that same mind or creator who made nature with that rational order built into it made us and our reason, so that we could perceive and understand the reason that he built into nature. That was what gave people confidence to do the hard work of investigation to figure out the hidden order, the design that is beneath the appearances of natural phenomenon. [From the transcript .]

First, we need to know what qualifies as an "extraordinary claim"? When challenging a claim based on how extraordinary it is, we need to ask why this claim is considered extraordinary. What makes a claim "extraordinary"? Where some claims "extraordinary" in the past but not "extraordinary" now? Are some claims "extraordinary" in some cultures, but not so in others? Extraordinary in comparison to what? In my experience, most individuals who make this claim seem to imply that anything that does not line up with the philosophy of naturalism is "extraordinary." The naturalists who hold to this view apparently do not realize that, if this is a presupposition to any claim they make, they have begged the question and committed a logical fallacy. Yet by this standard, any worldview could claim that anything contrary to its own presuppositions are "extraordinary." Without a solid definition of what counts as an "extraordinary claim," this becomes an almost meaningless statement.

Paul calls this effect or fruit or evidence of faith the “work of faith” (1 Thessalonians 1:3; 2 Thessalonians 1:11) and the “obedience of faith” (Romans 1:5; 16:26). These works of faith, and this obedience of faith, these fruits of the Spirit that come by faith, are necessary for our final salvation. No holiness, no heaven (Hebrews 12:14). So, we should not speak of getting to heaven by faith alone in the same way we are justified by faith alone.

Is there a God? No. What is the nature of reality? What physics says it is. What is the purpose of the universe? There is none. What is the meaning of life? Ditto. Why am I here? Just dumb luck . . . Is there free will? Not a chance. What is the difference between right and wrong, good and bad? There is no moral difference between them. Why should I be moral? Because it makes you feel better than being immoral. Is abortion, euthanasia, suicide, paying taxes, foreign aid, or anything else you don’t like forbidden, permissible, or something obligatory? Anything goes.[1]

No wonder there is so much emotional and relational emptiness. No wonder there is so much addiction and depression. If there is no purpose to life, then does it really matter what we do? We can try to pretend our lives have meaning, but like the imaginary game of “Monopoly,” each move is ultimately pointless.

For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

Recently, when I asked an atheist why he was an atheist, the first reason he gave was that “science has disproved God.” When I asked what he meant by that, he started listing miracles in the Bible—such as the virgin birth—that were impossible for him to believe “because of science.”

Yes, if scraps like this are to be trusted over the New Testament gospels, there is a lot to rethink. But there’s no reason to trust anything other than the canonical gospels. They are the earliest and most reliable descriptions we have of Jesus. The picture of Jesus in these gospels was consistently repeated from apostolic teacher to student, from the original eyewitnesses to the second generation of believers (like Ignatius and Polycarp), to the third and fourth generation of disciples (like Irenaeus and Hippolytus) and beyond. This picture of Jesus as the unmarried, miracle working Son of God who died on the cross and rose from the dead was repeated for 300 years before this particular scrap of papyrus was ever penned.

I fear we will on the other hand have much more difficulty finding common ground on a solution to gay “marriage.” Many people believe it’s still okay for the government to have its sticky fingers all over the institution of marriage, and to merely favor real marriage with legal benefits while denying gay unions those benefits; but such a solution is to me painfully short-sighted, failing to recognize that such a state of affairs is not sustainable; it will simply shift the next time the radical left gains power. We ought, in my opinion, to be working towards extricating marriage in its entirety from the domain of the government and placing it back in the hands of the religious community, complete with total 1st amendment protections for consciencious abstention from “marriages” one does not believe are legitimate.

The other night, as I was tucking my five-year-old son into bed, I was encouraging him to pray. He asked Jesus into his heart nearly a year ago and has such a passion for studying the Bible, but he still struggles with the concept of prayer. And I have to admit, this has been a more difficult thing to teach than I originally thought it would be. I want him to know he can pray to God any time about anything but I don’t want him to think God is up there to grant all of our wishes. We are to take everything to God in prayer, but we are to ask according to the Lord’s will. That is often hard for adults to understand, so it is definitely a difficult concept for a five-year-old to grasp. He has moments where his prayer requests are so sweet and thoughtful, like when he would pray for his Grandmama when she was battling leukemia. But then, sometimes he’s asking to win a t-ball game. But honestly, is that so different from our prayers at times?

The Fourth of July is just around the corner. Even now American churches are planning their Sunday service around it. Maybe they’ll include a patriotic hymn like “God Bless America” or the national anthem. Maybe men and women in uniform will parade the American flag down the center aisle. Maybe a congressman or mayor will offer a “special word.”
I love patriotic music, fireworks on the National Mall, and the country they’re honoring. But I confess I’m not a fan of celebrating America inside Sunday’s sanctuary.
It just might work against Jesus’s Great Commission.
Celebrating Our Nations
Civil religion is an old companion to American churches. Revolutionary-era pulpits pushed the cause of national identity. The Civil War divided one church from another over the same. The Truman and Eisenhower administrations mobilized churches in their fight against godless communism.
This companionship is gray-haired and venerable. It feels natural and neighborly, which means I might be challenging something deeply intuitive for you. Of course we should celebrate America! Hasn’t God blessed our nation?
Yes.

It's easy to prove the impossibility of atheism, but in this video author Mike Robinson utilizes the concept of 'analysis' to demonstrate God must exist and atheism is not possible. See Robinson's pb book amzn.to/2nyM2bb or kindle amzn.to/2BPjiQk

In his book, The Godly Man’s Picture , the Puritan Thomas Watson wrote, “A humble man is willing to have his name and gifts eclipsed, so that God’s glory may be increased. He is content to be outshone by others in gifts and esteem, so that the crown of Christ may shine the brighter. . . A humble Christian is content to be laid aside if God has any other tools to work with which may bring him more glory.” This humble attitude is the opposite of envy, which yearns to possess what others have. Envy is an expression of selfishness and pride. It’s good to see it clearly for what it is.

Hmmm...If Jesus really modeled & directed his followers to do all of the things you list in this description so wholeheartedly, he would not have been killed, & Christianity would not exist. Thank you for asking this article's question, but we need you to ask more.

"You know what's gonna happen here in the mornin? The whole damn Rebel Army is gonna be here. They'll move through this town, occupy these hills on the other side, and our people will get here, Lee will have the high ground. There'll be the DEVIL to pay. The HIGH GROUND!" pic.twitter.com/NFUf59Nx7O

And now I am a father with sons. And I rejoice that I can do for them what my father did for me. So last Wednesday evening just before Benjamin left for boot camp in Fort Jackson, South Carolina, we all sat down in the living room and I said, “There is a special verse I want to send with you, because my father sent it with me. It served me well and it will serve you well. ‘Fear not for I am with you. Be not dismayed for I am your God. I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.’”

🤝 Stand with us: https://www.gofundme.com/askdrbrownst... 06-29-18 The phone lines are wide open today on the Line of Fire Listen live here 3-4 pm EST, and call into the show at (866) 348 7884 with your questions and comments. Multistreaming with https://restream.io/

What to pray for this week: Pray that we would see ourselves as fellow sinners when we encounter the sins of others. Pray that we would be compassionate and forgiving of others, and strict with ourselves. Download 21 Days of Prayer for Life! bit.ly/2CkG6ff pic.twitter.com/OGewUc6weD

Many of us have played with wind-up toys over the years. After toys of this nature are wound, there is a limited period of time in which we can enjoy them. Within a few seconds, wind-up toys slow down and stop; they run out of energy. Imagine walking into an empty room and discovering a wind-up toy sitting on the floor, still operating (unwinding). The discovery of this toy (and the fact it is still in the process of unwinding), would raise two reasonable inferences: (1) the toy was recently wound at a fixed point in the not-too-distant past, and (2) there was an adequate cause responsible for the initial winding. In other words, you would start looking for the “winder” somewhere in the room, given the fact the toy was still in the process of unwinding. We happen to be living in a “wind-up” universe slowly losing its usable energy. If the universe had no beginning and was infinitely old, why would there be any usable energy still available to us? The fact there is still usable energy in the universe points to a beginning in which the universe was tightly wound, and causes us to look for the cause responsible for such winding.

True, but what is "a text"? Is the gospel of Mark "a text"? If so, which text is it? Is it the text that was canonically received? with vs 16:9-20 included? or is it the text with vs 16:9-20 called into question and even rejected as uninspired?

But there is something about the joy of this clip—which finds McCartney singing his old hits amid his old haunts in Liverpool—that is deeper than mere diversion. It’s a joy that is intertwined with sadness, nostalgia, and the ephemeral realities of life; a joy that is satisfying because it is unsatisfying; a joy that sparks in us that ineffable sense that, however beautiful the sunset, what we truly long for lies always beyond the horizon.

In this stimulating conversation with Dr. Russell Moore, Talbot Professor Dr. Scott Rae explores how to navigate the difficult terrain of meaningful cultural engagement while staying faithful to the Bible. Dr. Moore is the President of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the public policy and ethics think tank for the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S. Dr. Moore is featured regularly in various news media and has become one of the leading spokespersons for Christian faith in public life. Join us for this insightful discussion. [Show notes, including a full transcript and more information on today's guest are available at biola.edu/thinkbiblically]

What do all of those letters after your name actually stand for? The first three (BSc, PhD and DSc) are earned academic qualifications while the remainder (FInstP, FIMMM, CEng and CPhys) are professional qualifications. My Bachelor’s degree was in theoretical physics; the ‘doctor of philosophy’ degree was awarded for research, and the ‘doctor of science’ degree is a higher doctorate awarded for eminence in a given field, as judged by the quality of peer-reviewed publications.

From the bottom of my heart I'm making an appeal. To my fellow radio and TV commentators. To other journalists. To all of us posting on social media. Please. Can we show some restraint and demonstrate some civility in the aftermath of the latest mass shooting in our country?

BreakPoint This Week: John Stonestreet & Ed Stetzer review a whirlwind week at the U.S. Supreme Court, with victories for religious liberty and pro-life groups and the retirement of Justice Kennedy, the court's longtime "swing-vote" bit.ly/2Kvvl9H pic.twitter.com/zK2lQ0dcTp

Frank reflects on the life of Charles Krauthammer who just recently passed away then retakes the topic of his last podcast that focused on the question “What worldview best explains the biggest questions in life?” He deals with some of the most important questions we need to answer. Questions such as: Why is the universe fine-tuned? Why is there reliable cause and effect? Why is there such a thing as evidence? How did life begin? and many more. Listen to find out the answer to these questions.

Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement from the #SupremeCourt . It's likely his replacement will be considerably more conservative than he has been. This possibility has been causing lots of folk to ask: “Is it possible that Roe v. Wade will be reversed?” bit.ly/2yTAozp pic.twitter.com/fGVBnB1kHm

"Our Uncivil Age" According to one story, a newspaper once asked #GKChesterton what was wrong with the world. With his typical insight, he simply replied, “Dear Sir, I am.” I think he was onto something. bit.ly/2IwY9wZ pic.twitter.com/hUBlFdaSef